Abstract: Objective: To investigate the current awareness rate of the core knowledge of leprosy prevention and control among medical students. Methods: The students from Anhui Medical University, Bengbu Medical College, Wannan Medical College, Nanjing Medical University and Soochow University Health Science Center were selected by stratified random sampling method. Results: A total of 2114 were included. The rate of the core knowledge of leprosy was 58.18%. There was a significant difference in grade between the aware group and the non-aware group (P<0.05), while there was no significant difference in gender between the aware group and the non-aware group (P≥0.05). The top three main ways to acquire knowledge were publicity materials (26.36%), video media (25.73%) and publicity activities (24.29%), and 50 respondents (2.24%) had never contacted the core knowledge of leprosy prevention and control. There were 489 students who answered questions correctly in early symptoms over 3 (23.13%) and 234 students (11.07%) answered 0 question correctly. Conclusion: The awareness rate of the core knowledge of leprosy prevention and control among medical students in different universities is low. It is necessary to strengthen the publicity and education of early symptoms and core knowledge for this population.

Key words: leprosy, medical students, early symptoms, awareness rate